Chapter 1 - THE WINDOW I WASN’T SUPPOSED TO OPENMy grandfather slapped me hard enough to make the washing machine shake when I hit it.
I was sixteen.
Old enough to know what he was doing was wrong.
Still young enough to be terrified when an adult twice my size locked the door.
Walter Mercer grabbed the front of my blue T-shirt, dragged me upright, and shoved me backward.
My shoulder struck the machine.
I dropped to the laundry-room floor.
“Still think your dad’s coming to save you?” he asked.
I started crying.
I hated myself for that almost as much as I hated him seeing it.
Grandpa Walter hated crying.
According to him, crying was manipulation when women did it and weakness when men did it.
He grabbed my left sneaker by the heel and ripped it off.
“What are you doing?”
He threw it across the room.
It hit a laundry basket.
“Shut up. You’re being too loud.”
Then he stepped into the hallway.
“If you keep crying, I’ll starve you.”
The deadbolt clicked.
For a few seconds, I sat with my back against the washing machine and listened to his footsteps disappear.
My chest hurt from trying not to sob.
Then I thought about my father.
Mark Mercer lived less than three miles away.
Walter had spent the entire summer convincing me Dad wouldn’t come if I called.
That morning he had finally said why.
Because, according to Walter, Dad was about to lose me anyway.
There were papers.
A hearing.
A judge.
Grandpa said by September I would be living with him permanently.
“You’ll finally have some discipline.”
I didn’t understand what kind of hearing he meant.
I understood one thing.
I wanted my father.
The laundry room had one narrow window above the utility sink.
Walter believed it was painted shut.
Mostly, it was.
I climbed onto the sink in one sneaker.
The frame scraped beneath my fingers.
I shoved.
Nothing.
I shoved again.
The old brass latch dug into my palm.
I remembered Grandpa bragging that the landlord refused to replace anything in the house.
Cheap windows.
Cheap locks.
Cheap everything.
I stopped crying.
Put both hands beneath the latch.
Pulled.
Metal snapped.
The brass piece came off cleanly into my palm.
I stared at it.
Then, because being terrified apparently does strange things to your sense of humor, I whispered:
“Cheapo lock. Just like you, my beloved granddad.”
I pushed the window.
It opened six inches.
Then twelve.
I squeezed through headfirst, twisted onto my stomach, and dropped into the dead grass beneath it.
My remaining sneaker caught on the sill and fell back inside.
I landed barefoot on one side.
Pain shot up my ankle.
I ran anyway.
Down Walter’s driveway.
Past the rusted mailbox.
Across the drainage ditch.
Along a July road outside Plano where the pavement felt hot enough to burn through my sock.
Every time a truck passed, I thought Walter had followed me.
He hadn’t.
Not yet.
Dad’s house appeared around the bend.
White siding.
Blue shutters.
A maple tree he kept promising to trim.
I made it halfway across his front lawn.
Then my ankle gave out.
“Dad!”
The front door opened.
Mark Mercer came running.
He was forty-four, barefoot, wearing a black T-shirt, and for one ridiculous second my brain noticed he still had shaving cream beneath his ear.
“Eli?”
I tried to stand.
Couldn’t.
He reached me before I hit the ground.
“Whoa. I’ve got you.”
I grabbed his shirt.
Everything I had held back exploded.
Dad looked at my bare foot.
My torn shirt.
The red marks around my neck.
The brass window latch clenched in my fist.
Then his face changed.
“Where’s your grandfather?”
I couldn’t answer.
“Why did you run home by yourself?”
I buried my face against him and cried harder.
Dad stopped asking.
He put one arm beneath my knees and carried me inside.
Twenty minutes later, when I finally managed to speak, I said the sentence that changed our family.
“Grandpa says you’re about to lose custody of me.”
Dad went completely still.
May you like
Then he asked:
“What custody case?”
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